How Expedia Buys Its Way To The Top Of Google

by jmarbach • 13 years ago

494 155 13 years ago

brb gonna declare bankruptcy (google ads are reallly expensive and lots of bot/garbage clicks)

Since you joined just 3 days ago, just want to let you know that this isn't Reddit. Comments like this^ will be downvoted by most people here.

pastpartisan2• 13 years ago

I wish there were a way to delete since now i'm gonna get negged to death and I will probably need to make a new account

bdcravens3• 13 years ago

There is for a short time. If your account is only 3 days old I guess nothing of value is lost :-)

pknight• 13 years ago

This just adds to the list of why to hate Google.

Basically if you are either a big brand or a spammy company or have a nimble operation, you can afford to do grey & black seo. If you are a small business/ up and coming company white seo practices are the safe choice.

chaz• 13 years ago

This just adds to the list of why to hate Google.

Aren't all search engines susceptible to the same practices? How would you like to see them fixed?

PaulHoule3• 13 years ago

You could rank #1 for Viagra in Bing and get maybe two visits a day.

PaulHoule3• 13 years ago

Note that the worst content farms either evolved from or bought second and third tier search engines (About.com, AOL) because they could sue Google in an antitrust lawsuit if they ever got burned for their crappy content and linking schemes.

acgourley• 13 years ago

That's pretty interesting if true - do you have any evidence?

hkmurakami5• 13 years ago

The most hilarious example I know for black hat seo is in japan, where expired domains for congressional candidates get bought up by these spammy companies for their link quality.

(The Japanese govt pages have high page quality, and link directly to these candidate domains, thus giving these candidate pages high link quality status in google's eyes. The candidate pages become info-spam-blog pages that peddle things like cosmetics and link to the mother payload pages to impose so rank.)

davemel3718• 13 years ago

google resets PageRank on expired domains.

throwaway420• 13 years ago

Even if you use nothing but white-hat and above-board SEO strategies, you're at risk of your page getting penalized or delisted. This happens to people every day. Only unlike Rap Genius, there is literally zero way to communicate with somebody at Google unless you manage to get a popular thread going at HN.

I'm happy this Rap Genius incident happened because it's driven some attention to how Google's business actually operates, how poor their algorithms actually are, how arbitrary their search engine actually is, how poor their customer service practices are, and many other similar ideas.

Granted, these are monumentally hard problems to solve and Google still does it better than anybody else, but it's good that some attention is directed here because there are numerous problems with how ranking in Google currently works.

my_username_is_• 13 years ago

While I agree that it is necessarily difficult to create a search engine ranking algorithm that isn't gamed, customer service isn't something that should be lumped in with the 'difficult problems'. Google has been notoriously terrible at customer service for years and it's amazing that they've been so successful despite this.

ris3• 13 years ago

Even if you use nothing but white-hat and above-board SEO strategies, you're at risk of your page getting penalized or delisted

This rather suggests that what you're calling "white hat" is a slightly less white shade than you may think. After all, who exactly is defining what "above board" is here?

You're talking as though Google has some kind of responsibility to you. They don't. You are not their customer. Their customer is the searcher, and they have every right to do whatever they like with their results to give what they think is the best result for the searcher.

I'm getting pretty tired of this attitude (generally among "SEO" people) that Google is some sort of public property.

mesozoic2• 13 years ago

The problem being for any competitive keyword you're almost assured not to rank with completely white hat practices.

richardw• 13 years ago

If you are a small business/ up and coming company white seo practices are the safe choice.

Not (entirely) true. Here's a 'small business' sans any big-brand protection that is obviously spamming the heck out of electrician/plumber niches and has been succeeding for years. If you're near one of the relevant areas and Google "[area] plumber" you'll see a few of their sites on page 1. Not one or two. Maybe five. My fiancee got an electrician in from one of those sites and he was so clueless he claimed that his people were building an oven element (rather than buying it for $20 and just installing it.)

http://find-sa.co.za/directory/category/a1_plumbing_services...

See two pages with the same layout, and if you click around you'll see they're barely trying to hide it.

http://find-sa.co.za/directory/category/a1_plumbing_services...

This is 90's stuff. Google's being gamed badly by the most unsophisticated techniques. The guys who actually work in those areas and provide relevant services must be going crazy.

PaulHoule3• 13 years ago

I know a really good restaurant with a non specific name that has made a point to have landing pages at many different sites so if you search for them the top 20 or so results are all about them

Achorny• 13 years ago

I read the article, and obviously Google isn’t as good at filtering out overly optimized anchors as they claim. But I don't understand how this favors big brands over little ones (other then the fact that big brands probably have more money to throw at people to write the overly optimized anchors in the first place)?

hvass2• 13 years ago

I am a bit confused about the argument about Expedia not being penalized because they are spending on AdWords, wouldn't great organic rankings reduce their paid budget? And if Google penalizes them for legitimate reasons I doubt they would cut their AdWords budget.

I am sure Matt will provide more info soon especially after what happened to RapGenius.

davemel3718• 13 years ago

Google did research that shows having organic rankings and paid ads, boosts your click rate significantly. So, it would be a mistake to stop advertising if you rank well organically. http://www.google.com/think/infographics/organic-impact-on-p...

This is nothing compared to what RapGenius did. This is a low quality, but legit link building tactic.

The author claims the articles are poor quality, but they aren't. The only red flag is commercial keywords as anchor text, which Penguin today does a good job of discounting.

girvo2• 13 years ago

Why is this legit? It seems bullshit to me, as an outsider, just another way if gaming the system.

camillomiller3• 13 years ago

Well, if the n-th useless top ten blog post about travel is "quality content" I'm seriously scared by the brainwash that the google-cutts philosophy of great content has already performed upon us.

hvass2• 13 years ago

I am aware of the study, even so, where does the Expedia AdWords spend come into play as an argument? So they get penalized - they won't cut AdWords obviously, they might even up it. They do not get penalized, they either cut their AdWords budget or it remains the same. Again, where is the incentive for Google to not penalize Expedia? Because the AdWords argument doesn't hold.

wzy• 13 years ago

This is why i don't follow what Google say about "correct" SEO. I just do what i know works for me.

iaskwhy• 13 years ago

This kind of SEO hack seems hard to fix with an algo. One way might be to target "content" creators like Abby and Jennifer as they probably use Google+ (and probably other social networks) to promote their work. By targeting the writers and giving some penalty to everything they write as well as the site where the article is published, these sites will need to verify how good the writers are before accepting the guest post.

I believe avoiding targeting the big brands is for the better since giving bad reputation to the brand linked on these articles would backfire with false articles against competitors.

davemel3718• 13 years ago

This is what Google was hoping too accomplish with AuthorRank.

Penguin is also discounting many of these links that have commercial keywords as anchor text. (I wonder if these links even help them.)

busterarm• 13 years ago

Ignore all links from pages with "Top #" in them. Or in paragraphs below emphasized/numbered headlines.

That'd really stick it to sites like Cracked.

jpalomaki2• 13 years ago

Does this all lead to Google+? It sure would help Google if more content was produced inside their walled garden where they have pretty good grasp on who is producing it.

bryan_rasmussen• 13 years ago

It seems that this is an awful thing that google is doing, but I really couldn't get very far in the article before getting tired of the author's unintentional schtick - the following is where I stopped:

"They don’t buy links? They don’t bribe bloggers? They don’t sell links on MOZ? Yes, you’re reading right. SEOs sell links on MOZ. But we all know this. It is so obvious. But MOZ is not the topic of this article.

And this is not going to be an article; I would like to look at it as a report. We will make a report about huge companies (we will start with one company), ranking for tens of thousands of keywords using black hat tactics. "

RBerenguel• 13 years ago

I almost stopped there, but the examples afterwards are pretty much spot on

com2kid• 13 years ago

It is sad that an article with actual content towards the end has so much filler to start with. I think this post would be a lot more impactful if it started out as

"Hey, you want to know who else pays bloggers to link to their site? Expedia.com, here is some proof:"

I can understand the author's frustration, and he brings good points to the table, but the first quarter or so of the article is neigh unreadable.

milsorgen• 13 years ago

I personally enjoy the 'squeeze page' aesthetic used.

davemel3718• 13 years ago

I see no proof or mention of paying bloggers for links.

aptwebapps2• 13 years ago

Why did they do it then? The links weren't topical and they weren't affiliate links. Is it that hard to figure out the motive?

Edit: Are they using http referrers so reward the correct affiliate?

MichaelTieso7• 13 years ago

Do you honestly think they are not paying bloggers? They've paid PLENTY of bloggers. I get these emails all the time.

cclogg• 13 years ago

It's weird when you realize how much stuff that seems organic is really just a massive ploy/effort by a company or PR firm. I think even Paul Graham had an article about PR firms related to the comeback of the 'suit' haha.

One wonders how safe HN will be from this. Inevitably if something can generate views or $$ then someone will have an interest in gaming it.

davemel3718• 13 years ago

This is and always has been the nature of Business. Long before search engines or the internet came into being. People will do whatever they can to get exposure, publicity, and a competitive edge.

All marketing is a Ploy if you really think about it, and businesses for intents and purposes is just an investment vehicle and marketing is how your turn over that investment.

Heck news media a ploy for corporations.

Someone has to Pay the Bills and Keep The Lights On

clarkm• 13 years ago

It wasn't too long ago that calling someone a "corporate shill" meant you were parodying tinfoil hatters. It's funny how quickly things change.

swang• 13 years ago

The article you are referring to is "The Submarine"

http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

bdcravens3• 13 years ago

So an SEO "firm" (around since 2010, but their domain was registered in November?) is exposing secrets of SEO, which they imply is the secret sauce to getting to the top. What's the end game?

hkmurakami5• 13 years ago

Establish themselves as an expert and increase potential consulting business revenue

bdcravens3• 13 years ago

It seems though that they're not disputing the ethics of the thing, and they even acknowledge they were busted by Google for unethical tactics. Not exactly confidence inspiring.

Danieru• 13 years ago

Matt Cutts has said Google is trying to break Blackhat SEO's spirits. That tactic appears to be working and this post is a result of that. The author is not trying to build their brand or position themselves. Rather they are sad and angry. To them the situation feels unfair and they want to make the big abusers feel the same pain they've experienced.

jfoster• 13 years ago

I think it's awesome that Google busts as many blackhats as they can. I don't want blackhat seo to be what I need to engage in in order to be successful. I'm reckon I'm better at creating value than I am at link building, so it suits me.

That said, Google are not doing a very comprehensive job of busting blackhats. Even some of the cases that an algorithm should be able to easily detect are not being punished in the same way that RapGenius was. This essentially leaves everyone in an awkward situation. You can't compete using whitehat methods because your competitors are using blackhat methods and Google is turning a blind eye. You end up with two options; (a) lower your standards and start using blackhat methods, or (b) hope that Google will eventually punish your dodgy competitors and buy traffic from Google in the interim.

davemel3718• 13 years ago

I see no smoking gun here or evidence of paid linking, or even link schemes. I just see legit guest posts, that could just as easily be meant to drive referral traffic.

Ironically, Tampa is where BlueGlass was located before they went bellyup.

Personally, I think articles likes these are fine for SEO. The articles are NOT PAID FOR and while the links might not be totally organic, you could certainly argue it adds some value to the post. (i.e. expedia's app is a good app for finding cheap airfare.)

Google has announced several times that they are going to crack down on poor quality guest posting, and I think expedia should be a little more progressive in their anchor text (i.e. linking with a brand name, url or even not linking... but just mentioning the brand name could help their rankings.)

Bottom line, Good offsite SEO today is a more polished version of this...

Step 1: Create Linkable, shareable, emotionally charged content.

Step 2: distribute your content socially.

Step 3: Do outreach to bloggers and journalists to get exposure to their audience, and perhaps attract links...

That being said, aside from the overly optimized anchor text, this is legitimate link acquisition and its what all SEOs do today... They create content and try to get distribution far and wide.

These links and posts could just as easily be traffic generation strategies, not SEO strategies.

corresation• 13 years ago

These links and posts could just as easily be traffic generation strategies, not SEO strategies.

Are these not essentially the same thing? I understand that in the SEO business this has all been carefully nuanced, but in the general world the idea behind pagerank was that it made the web a democracy of sorts[1], where authentic, honest links organically demonstrate resources that users find most useful. That is the antithesis of "whoever can pay the most to have the most pages full of rote text created with paid links tops".

[1] - I should mention that organic linking is virtually dead, so perhaps it really doesn't matter. Blogs are, by and large, dead (and the few that persist engage in a circle-link pattern that is intended to essentially keep it in the family), and they (and personal websites) accounted for the overwhelming majority of legitimately organic links. Outside of that source of links, sites like Reddit and even probably HN are overwhelmingly gamed and manipulated, because the majority of users simply don't "vote" at all, leaving the manipulators an easy course to ply.

The web has been bought and paid for for several years now.

derefr• 13 years ago

Are these not essentially the same thing?

Not quite. SEO is about optimizing PageRank, which is a false proxy for a website's popularity. "Traffic generation" means actually increasing the site's popularity, for real users.

pdeuchler2• 13 years ago

I smell bacon.

"A little about me... I am a search marketing consultant,and I love everything about marketing and emerging technology. Growth Hacking is my strongest skillset, especially when leveraging search engines."

While I'm not sure that what you're doing is technically astroturfing, it's still equally as dishonest.

First, none of the links described in TFA match your "guidelines" to "Good offsite SEO", so even by your own admission this is not "Good offsite SEO".

Second, there is no such thing as "Good offsite SEO", since any "offsite SEO" is by definition either link farming or gaming the system. The entire point of the Penguin update (if I'm not mistaken) was to prevent quite literally all "offsite SEO" so google can rank your page according to your content, and so they can reliably weight incoming links. If an incoming link (that is not on your site!) has been SEO'd then by definition it is not an organic, quality incoming link.

Third, you state "this is legitimate link acquisition and its what all SEOs do today", which undermines the entirety of your post since link acquisition is by definition not organic, nor does it produce "quality" inbound links.

But hey, since "its what all SEOs do today" it must be kosher.

Edit: Just to address your last point (not to pile on or anything, but I feel like it's important), I'm pretty sure this is a willful conflation of two totally separate concepts. Since, you know, everyone who's ever done any sort of SEO knows that if you want to drive traffic, but not pay the penalties for link farming, you use rel="nofollow". Which Expedia/ the blogger did not do.

davemel3718• 13 years ago

"While I'm not sure what your doing is astroturning, its equally dishonest"

I don't even know what that means. But, that was written close to two years ago... I have since moved on to content development and traffic strategy. Still, Whats wrong with being a search marketer and knowing about link building strategies that are legit. Why is building a site that inherently attracts links, not both legit to google, and a growth hack?

I think your understanding of Penguin, or Offsite SEO are misinformed. Creating great content and proactively seeking exposure to that content is perfectly white hat and within Googles guidelines. Using No Follow is for PAID placements, advertising and advertorials. These posts were none of the above. Blogger outreach without incentive (i.e. content they chose to feature because it adds value to their audience.) is a bedrock of content marketing and inbound marketing, and traffic generation, and I would do these things even if Google and Search Engines never existed.

Bottom Line, distributing quality content through outreach is a legitimate practice that all GOOD seo's engage in, and whether you like it or not, its in Googles best interest as well for content creators to be incentivized to create more content, which comes about through growing an audience, which comes from exposure to other publishers audience, and search engines.

MichaelTieso7• 13 years ago

No. These "guest posts" are not quality articles. Typically they are written from third world countries to pump out as many articles as possible. They are tricking bloggers pretending it's a guest post but in reality it's being used for link bait.

nkurz• 13 years ago

StackedMidgets: You've been banned for about 6 months.

stackedmidgets 3 hours ago | link [dead]

You're hilariously wrong, due to your ignorance. As someone who has written thousands of black hat articles just like these, even in the same vertical as discussed in the article, except more specific (certain niche European destinations) -- well written, for what I was paid -- I can say that articles like these are paid for, and violate Google's guidelines.

There's on article that I'm particularly proud of that involved inventing all sorts of fictional romantic adventures on an island off the coast of Spain that included specific anchor text about cheap hotels for that destination. Creative? Sure! It was almost as good as a print ad, even though it's likely that few real readers actually read the thing. Violating Google's guidelines? Fuck yes!!

Google has no access to the bank accounts of these writers to verify that the links were paid for. The search quality team can't plum the e-mail accounts of everyone involved to see that said articles were commissioned to include specific anchor text.

It's quite difficult to establish objectively whether or not the writers were paid for this. However, I can say that whenever black hatters write these kinds of articles, we're instructed by the client to include certain anchor text types, and to vary the anchor text for different articles in the same campaign.

Further, botted traffic adds another ugly layer to gaming SEO. The publisher just has to 'look' legitimate. The traffic can even be semi-botted by offices full of Indians using software for that purpose.

lisp-and-seo• 13 years ago

It is very simple: Expedia is paying over a billion $ annually for ads, Google is giving them a buy one, get one free deal.

Google is only having "SEO scheme" problems with freeloaders, like RapGenius.

To site Wikipedia: "Don't be evil" was the informal corporate motto (or slogan) of Google. Key word here is was.

dpatrick86• 13 years ago

This is what you get when you take the shortcut of moving away from a strict algorithmic ranking: obvious abuse of prosecutorial discretion.

ivanbrussik• 13 years ago

how bout we look into nenad who looks like they are really active on a "blackhat SEO forum" and gets tons of links from there. seems legit.

arikrak• 13 years ago

As Google moves away from relying on pagerank, it will make such schemes less effective, and people will need to try harder to game Google.

davemel3718• 13 years ago

I think most SEOs agree that as long as links are what connects the internet, they will be an important ranking factor.

ecopoesis2• 13 years ago

This isn't paid linking-- it's an affiliate/referral program. Expedia isn't paying for the link, they're paying for the conversions generated by the link. Every OTA does this, and it's how the mass of travel sites that aren't OTAs make all their money.

This is all Google's fault. Most travel sites used to try to generate good content, and then buy SEM to their content and use OTA search widgets to monetize via affiliate programs. But Google decided this was search arbitrage, and stopped approving SEM landing pages that were monetized by affiliate search, so people have had to resort to text links, in the hope that someone will click and they can drop their cookie and get paid.

NB: I used to work for a site that was at the time owned by Expedia.

davemel3718• 13 years ago

Good Point. There are services like viglink, skimlinks, and others that will dynamically insert links after the content was written.

I have to wonder though if these specific posts were linkbuilding posts, because of the location of the Authors. (i.e. Tampa - where copypress is, and blueglass was.)

aptwebapps2• 13 years ago

I didn't believe that until it occurred to me that they could be using the http referrer to reward the affiliates. The links themselves don't seem to contain an affiliate identifier. Is that the case?

ecopoesis2• 13 years ago

Usually there is an iframe that drops a cookie on Expedia's (or whoever's) domain. The usual deal is the partner gets paid on any conversions within 30 days of dropping the cookie, with the newest affiliate winning, but there are also more complicated source attribution schemes out there.

dangrossman3• 13 years ago

There's no major affiliate/referral program that uses HTTP referrers to assign commissions. No affiliate would agree to such a system as they'd not be paid for tons of valid referrals.

MichaelTieso7• 13 years ago

This is definitely paid linking. I own a very popular travel website and friends with other popular travel related sites. I can confirm that Expedia has contacted us to purchase links. It's not really news and very well known in the travel community. Often their pay is as low as $10 for a link.

davemel3718• 13 years ago

Would love to see proof. Care to share the email?

ryguytilidie• 13 years ago

This is what always frustrates me about these discussions. There will be a long, article citing many sources and someone will simply say "thats not true" without seeming to have any knowledge at all of what they are talking about. Later on, someone like you, with actual facts, contradicts the other person and I wonder why someone who had no idea what they were talking about definitively shot down a well thought out point in the first place at all...?

dangrossman3• 13 years ago

These are direct links, not affiliate links, and there are no hidden iframes stuffing cookies as you suggested later. These links aren't part of any referral program.

artag• 13 years ago

Martin MacDonald's thoughts on this subject (Big Brand SEO Spam): http://webmarketingschool.com/big-brand-seo-spam/

MichaelTieso7• 13 years ago

Just a few emails I usually get from Expedia.

"In fact, the article can be about any topic related to your blog, just mentioning at some point something like “find coupon codes for Expedia”, “get some deals in Expedia”.. Do you think that would fit in? Doesn’t have to look very spammy (we don’t want that either). What do you think?

About the price, how much would it be a post like this with maybe 2 links? "

AND

"I’m looking to place a link this week on the homepage, but can I ask when the link for expedia.co.uk expires on your site?"

These are just two examples. There are plenty of these. BUT it does appear that they are now hiring quality bloggers to write on their own blog so perhaps things have changed.

davemel3718• 13 years ago

If this is accurate it is a very poor seo and Expedia needs to hire better folks. Why place two links? Google will barely count a second link on the same page to the same URL...

I did notice that they give the blogger discretion on the link placement and anchor text so its somewhat natural...although still clearly link spam worth penalizing!

MichaelTieso7• 13 years ago

Every email I've gotten from Expedia has been from a different SEO company too.

thematt• 13 years ago

Isn't this very similar to what RapGenius just got penalized for? Only difference seems to be Expedia is not providing anything in exchange for the crappy linkbit like RG was offering to.

putlake• 13 years ago

Yes, this is similar but more sophisticated. With RapGenius, taking action was easy because the company admitted what they were doing and all the evidence was in the open. Also, the links were clearly spammy.

With these examples, the links are clearly spammy to a human but a little less detectable by a bot. And -- this is crucial -- there is no evidence yet linking these bloggers back to Expedia. Google will have to do a little more digging to figure out the nexus and analyze the quality of Expedia's backlink profile before they can slap a penalty. My guesstimate is that there's a 1 in 3 chance there will be a penalty and a 1 in 10 chance the penalty will be public.

nawitus• 13 years ago

How much were they willing to pay?

MichaelTieso7• 13 years ago

They have gone from $10 to $100 per sponsored post.

cowardlyanon• 13 years ago

I used to own and run two popular travel sites and have been contacted by a third party to place Expedia links for under $400/year on both sites.

Even though the third party had nothing to do with Expedia (besides emailing me the particular anchor text and URL), the fact that I was only ever contacted to put Expedia links and no other sites in the 5 years I've been running them made me think that they were Expedia shills.

(this is obviously a throw away account)

gesman• 13 years ago

Google is a goverment of internet. To be a good citizen is to pay taxes. You pay taxes - you have a chance.

You try to avoid taxes - you get squished.

pyb• 13 years ago

Looks like Google might have reacted, I googled 'cheap flights' and Expedia is not on the front page.

MrBlue• 13 years ago

Looking forward to see how Cutts spins this.

rch• 13 years ago

I thought this was understood across the board. I'm interested to see how the conversation plays out though.

ysekand• 13 years ago

I can demonstrate that Microsoft sells links.

syllogism• 13 years ago

Go on then.

searchmartin6• 13 years ago

FULL DISCLOSURE:

Im an Expedia employee (inbound marketing director, covering SEO), although Im currently at the end of my notice period. (Im leaving in two weeks).

Also, I worked in the B2B division, nothing to do with the consumer side that this article references.

The author of the post linked above contacted me a couple of days before publishing it, to warn me that he would publish (quote: "damning evidence of expedia spam").

HOWEVER: If I wanted him to not publish it, he would "sell the post to the highest bidder".

That was what prompted me to post this on my personal blog: http://webmarketingschool.com/big-brand-seo-spam/ and for the record, I told him to sling his hook reference to extorting money out of anyone in exchange for not posting stuff about their backlinks.

No doubt that is why I got singled out in the article. You'll notice that at the top I get mentioned as being in charge of this stuff, then right down at the bottom, he mentions that in fact Ive got nothing to do with it.

I'll let you all draw your own conclusions.

1337biz• 13 years ago

Conclusion: You guys are having some he-said-she-said issue that's kinda cute but doesn't change thing about the questionable Expedia tactics.

searchmartin6• 13 years ago

Which is in no way relevant to me, other than I worked for a different division of the same company.

The only reason I got mentioned, was that I refused to pay money to not have it published, and told the author that blackmail wasnt a great idea.

If someone had attempted to extort you, and were now using your name in this fashion, wouldnt you want to respond?

r0h1n• 13 years ago

Your allegation is a strong one. Plus considering that your personal reputation is being impugned against by Nenad, I wonder why you don't publish his email where he said he would "sell the post to the highest bidder"?

searchmartin6• 13 years ago

Because I turned down the offer and gave him advice before he published his story.

I took the decision then not to out the behaviour - however given that Im targeted in the article I've since slackened my ethics on how to treat the situation.

berkay2• 13 years ago

Martin, if what you're saying is true, that's very shady behavior on his part. However, it does not have any impact on what he's saying. Your post seems to say "yes big brands are doing it and can do it because they are brands, suck it up"

I don't think we should accept that same behavior should have different implications depending on who is doing it.

searchmartin6• 13 years ago

I totally agree there should be one set of rules and thats it.

Thing is, there IS one set of rules already - and thats governed by the google organic results algo which looks at a sites backlink profile as a whole.

If its mainly crap links with no authority then the site will get banned. If its a big brand site with authority and reputation, its really tough from Google's perspective to simply ban that site and all its pages because there are some links of questionable authority pointed at it.

IF they did that, the search results would be a pretty lonely place, and it would be super easy to remove sites positioned above yours in the results!

C1D• 13 years ago

I would trust this post if you could at the very least provide some evidence that he did contact you and that you are leaving because to me, it seems like you're just a employee trying to pin the blame on him and do a little damage control.

The fact that you're the Marketing Director at Expedia makes it even worse (if you are lying).

EDIT: Okay, I just did some research and this person's company is extremely fishy but I would still like to see some evidence.

davemel3718• 13 years ago

Proof or not, his point is sound. Why was he referenced in the article about Expedia if he has nothing to do with the allegations presented?

searchmartin6• 13 years ago

Proof Im leaving? Check the date on this post on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mogmartin/posts/10151730878862337

As for pinning blame on the author?

Hardly...

Im not debating anything he said, other than calling my name out.

Its not my place to deny OR corroborate any claims against a division that I NEVER worked for, of a company that I no longer work for! ;)

lazyjones2• 13 years ago

I'll let you all draw your own conclusions.

I'll draw my conclusion among other things from statements such as:

Sure, there are some skeletons in SEO-closets, but thats the same for every single major site that has existed for a decade or longer, bar none.

Not only do you attempt to drag the whole web business through the mud after being caught with your pants down, you also personally insult people who have been opposed to these kinds of practices and still ran major sites for a long time.

If I were you, I'd keep quiet and seek a position somewhere unrelated to SEO and not taint Expedia's reputation even more by invoking the "everyone else is doing it" defense, which most people in the web business know is just plain wrong.

Also, I'd now expect people to scrutinize Wikipedia more, looking for spammy Expedia links. Thanks for the hint.

davidw• 13 years ago

SEO articles often leave me with the same feeling I get when I realize I've stepped in dog poop.

swombat4• 13 years ago

You know all those bloggers/SEOs at MOZ giving webmasters tips and tricks on how to rank higher? Well, they never said: “Guys, you gotta do basic on-page SEO, buy quality links and you will rank higher, that’s all you need to know.” Instead they keep selling stories how their clients rank using “white hat” SEO.

GrantTree is ranked pretty high against our competitors on several keywords that are important to us. This was all entirely through whitehat SEO within about a year of setting out to do it. We've just written lots of high-quality content on our blog, and then contributed genuine, original articles to other sides and got them to include a link to GrantTree or to one of our topic sub-pages (like http://granttree.co.uk/tax_credits ) in the byline. We've never bought links, nor will we ever buy links.

Now, GrantTree's context is not super-competitive like, say, Expedia or RapGenius... but we do have competitors. So competing with good, well-structured content and genuine contributions to other sites does work - at least in some contexts.

Also, I'm frequently on the receiving end of these "your blog/site/whatever is awesome and we'd love to publish a high-quality article on your blog and we'll even pay you for it" emails, and as far as I'm concerned they are spam. I never even bother replying to them.

I'll be happy if Google nails those spammy bastards to the wall - both the paymasters and the so-called bloggers.

(Note: this makes no judgement on the claim that Expedia is partaking in this)

effn• 13 years ago

So you get other sites to publish your articles, but when other sites want to do the same to you, you call that spam?

swombat4• 13 years ago

No. People I meet on and offline ask me to write an article for them. I don't approach them.

Occasionally I have written a full blown article and suddenly realised it would be better suited for another site (eg techcrunch) and approached the editor there to ask if they would like to publish that specific article, but I don't do blanket "can I write something for you". That would be highly hypocritical!

MichaelTieso7• 13 years ago

Curious: Would you still write the article if the link was nofollow? And what links are you requiring in the byline? I'm very suspicious of any company asking to "guest post".

swombat4• 13 years ago

Would you still write the article if the link was nofollow?

Typically I've written the article before passing it on to someone, so in those cases, obviously the question doesn't apply. In the latter case, if someone asks for me to e.g. write about tax credits for their site, then it's only polite for them to allow us to include a byline without nofollow.

And what links are you requiring in the byline?

Hah, whatever I can get :-) Depends on the site, obviously, but if I can get links to some of our topic pages with the right text, I'll go for that! (e.g. http://www.ec1capital.com/blog/rd-tax-credits-explained).

We don't "ask to guest post" as a company, though I've offered to write some good original content on occasion, but only in person and with no pressure.

judk2• 13 years ago

So you want people who need grants to buy your service. Instead of convincing Google that your website is the best place for grants, you write a bunch of (good!) articles about grants and then place house ads for your paid service.

Observations: 1. As a product search experience, that is still horribly broken.

2. It is still good for the web, incentivizing you to create quality content.

swombat4• 13 years ago

I'm not sure where the "place house ads for your paid service" idea is coming from? We haven't paid for advertising.

jpalomaki2• 13 years ago

Once you start giving penalties for this kind of behavior, then you open up the possibility for really black hat people using this against their competition.

aerolite• 13 years ago

Funny how Matt Cutts was all over the Rap Genius article on HN right after it came out and he's nowhere to be found here. Must be the millions Expedia spends on Adwords, or my cynicism, one of the two.

alixaxel2• 13 years ago

I'm nearly halfway through and I must say this is being a very good read. Great piece of investigative journalism.

adidash• 13 years ago

How is it any different from offline world of business? Seems like big businesses with resources always go that extra mile to compete with other big businesses. The small businesses are usually the collateral damage.

ksolanki• 13 years ago

This and the Rap Genius stories go on to show why algorithmic search (aka Google search) is not going to last another ten years. It probably already does, but more and more Google algorithms will include lots of ifs and buts.

There is definitely some room for fresh approaches to content discovery, knowledge indexing, and finding answers. New startup(s) or Google rediscovering itself?

repkor• 13 years ago

Because of its large inventory of information

rivo• 13 years ago

A friend of mine used to work for one of these paid content agencies. Her job was to set up a few Wordpress blogs a day while writers filled them with content. Apparently, among their clients were lots of large companies. It seems, though, that after Google's crackdown on duplicate/fake content etc. they had to take a massive hit in revenues. They've since let most of their employees go and have - so far not very successfully - been looking for a new business model.

lazyjones2• 13 years ago

I'd really like to have a place where we can report those dubious "SEO companies" who are sending spam e-mails to website owners offering to write "guest posts", so they and their practices can be scrutinized better by the community and perhaps search engines.

For example, slap-up-media.net spammed us today, offering to pay us to publish guest posts written by them. I'd really like to know who their clients are (but would not risk accepting their offer out of curiosity).

How Expedia Buys Its Way To The Top Of Google

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